March 28th: Hotel Chocolat The Sleekster All About Mum Selection

Attention boys and girls! Next Sunday (April 3rd) is Mothers Day so we today have a special edition Hotel Chocolat Monday looking at the a very nice little option you may wish to gift.

Indeed, the kind folk at Hotel Chocolat sent me this 'The Sleekster All About Mum Selection' a few weeks ago, so this year I have been well prepared much earlier than normal :D This All About Mum collection contained 28 separate chocolates and came described as being 'created especially for mum to enjoy with their feet up - with uplifting fruit recipes, silky smooth cream truffles and melt-away pralines'. Before anyone ask, yes of course I did share these with my own mother - you may have noticed how her views make it in to pretty much all my Hotel Chocolat reviews anyway.

As you can see from my photo above, this was packaged in the traditional Hotel Chocolat Sleekster style. The gold coloured box and inner chocolates were aesthetically nice on the eye, whilst the inner menu displaying the thirteen different chocolates was accurate which is more than can be said for some of the previous Sleekster boxes I had reviewed before.

Many of the pieces were ones that I had reviewed in previous boxes, with many of them being sourced from the Valentines Day collection boxes. Below are my thoughts on each of the pieces.

The four hearts above were all featured in my review of the Hotel Chocolat Melting Hearts H-Box Selection (See HERE). Going from left-to-right, back-to-front, you may wish to be reminded that these pieces achieved the following ratings. Liquid Caramel - Very Good, Peanut Passion - Superb, Strawberry Love - Superb and lastly Pistachio Praline - Superb. We also managed to eat both Banana Split pieces before I could get a snap of one of them :D Before you panic I reviewed the exact same chocolate HERE - Very Good.

Blueberry Truffle - My mother absolutely loves blueberries and you may remember she was a real fan of the same sort of truffle featured in the 'Quail Egg' format in my Hotel Chocolat last week (See HERE). Once again she she absolutely loved it in this truffle form, and described the taste as a beautiful concoction of cream and wildberry fruits. Superb.Caramel Sweetheart - Previously reviewed back in January 2009 (See HERE). I still didn't think much of these pieces. The promised touch of cherry didn't come through in the taste of the chocolate, whilst the cocoa crispies and chopped hazelnuts upset the texture of the melt. By Hotel Chocolat standards I still thought these were pretty sub-standard. Poor.

A Kiss For Mothers Day - Well, what can I say about this piece? The dark chocolate and exterior and dark chocolate ganache filling made for a delicious cocoa rich taste, however there were a few notable mentions about the design of the chocolate. A pair of lips for mothers day? Hmmm ... we thought it was a little odd. Good.Mother of Pearl - We all thought this was a beautiful looking chocolate. It's marble finish and smooth hazelnut praline filling reminded us all of Guylian Seashell chocolates, just with far better milk chocolate, with the house 40% recipe establishing a creamy sweet cocoa taste. Superb.

Love-Me-Do - This was one of the liqueur chocolate truffles in the selection and combined an exterior dark chocolate shell with a Armagnac brandy ganache. Not being a spirits fan I wasn't the best person to try this one so I left it to my parents who described it as a well balanced, rich tasting chocolate. They also loved the mouth warming sensation it created. Very Good.Bakewell Tart - This was a new piece that sounded very exciting to me,. so I latched in to it right away despite its cherry brand and Amaretto liqueur content. This chocolate was visually nice on the eye with it's cream coloured centre, and it also tasted delicious with it's creamy, sweet alcohol noted flavours. Most positively both the cherry and the nut element of the Bakewell dessert came though in what was a very authentic taste. Very Good.

Champagne Truffle - This was a piece that silly had to be in this selection, and Hotel Chocolat didn't let us down. My mother is a real fan of champagne and she just loved the Marc de Champagne noted cream ganache centre and said it was a near perfect match for the delicious 40% milk chocolate outer shell. She ate both of them before I could get one :D Superb.

Overall this was a very accomplished selection of chocolates and should be one that you should seriosuly be considering in your mind for gifting if chocolates are your choice of present this year. Apart from the questionable lips design, we all thought the collection was well designed and the pieces offered great variety in the type of fillings included. As you can determine by the ratings, the only disappointment for me was the inclusion of the Caramel Sweethearts. Those aside there are some really cracking chocolates on offer here - the Blueberry Truffle, Liquid Caramel and Isabelle pieces being the ones that spring to mind first. As I said above, I would highly recommend this Hotel Chocolat The Sleekster All About Mum Selection as a fine option for Mothers day this year.